06/03/2026
SEVENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT CHIEF JUDGE MADE UP HER OWN LAW. FOR TWO YEARS.
The Docket Drip was built by two moms who got tired of watching the system fail families — including their own — and decided to start documenting it. Today we're putting two statutes side by side and showing you exactly what a chief judge invented when she decided the law wasn't enough.
Because when a mother started filing cases against a process server, a guardian ad litem, judges, and a psychology practice — all connected to her family court proceedings — someone decided she needed to be stopped. Not through the legal process the Legislature created. Not through the mandatory statute that requires five qualifying cases, a hearing, findings, and Supreme Court certification. Through an order conjured from scratch, citing no controlling authority, following no required procedure, and backed by the threat of jail.
The question worth asking is why. Why bypass every procedural safeguard that exists specifically to protect citizens from exactly this kind of order? Why silence a mother who was documenting defamation, slander, libel, and perjury inside her own family court proceedings? Why use the Sheriff's Office — her own civil rights litigation target — to serve the papers that would shut her up?
Who benefits when a litigant exposing potential fraud in judicial proceedings suddenly cannot file, cannot call, cannot email, and cannot appear without paying for an attorney she cannot afford?
We'll let you draw your own conclusions. We're just here to show you the documents.
FIRST — THE LAW THAT EXISTED IN 2024
§68.093, Florida Statutes (2024) — the version in effect when the order was entered
🔗 https://flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2024/68.093
The 2024 statute defined a vexatious litigant as someone who had commenced five or more civil actions — finally and adversely determined — in the preceding five years.
It was explicit about what did NOT count:
➡️ Family law matters (FMCI, FMDL) — expressly excluded from the definition of "action"
➡️ Small claims — excluded
➡️ Pending cases — excluded
➡️ Cases where an attorney later withdrew — not counted as pro se
And it was explicit about what a court could actually do:
➡️ A defendant could move for a security order — upon notice and hearing
➡️ The court could enter a prefiling order prohibiting new pro se actions — with a leave-of-court pathway back in through the administrative judge
➡️ Disobedience of a prefiling order could be punished as contempt by the administrative judge — narrowly, for commencing a new action without leave
➡️ The clerk must send copies of all prefiling orders to the Florida Supreme Court Clerk, who must maintain a registry
That registry is public and searchable:
🔗 https://supremecourt.flcourts.gov/the-court/clerk/vexatious-litigants
That is the complete list of authorized remedies. That is the whole statute.
NOW — THE LAW THE LEGISLATURE PASSED IN 2025
CS/CS/HB 1559, effective July 1, 2025 — passed 37-0 in the Senate, 114-0 in the House
🔗 https://www.flsenate.gov/Committees/billsummaries/2025/html/1559
After recognizing the gaps, the Legislature expanded the law. Here is what they added:
➡️ Extended the lookback period from 5 years to 7 years
➡️ For the first time, included family law cases as qualifying actions
➡️ For the first time, included small claims cases
➡️ For the first time, included cases from other states and federal courts
➡️ For the first time, included repeated frivolous pleadings within a single case
➡️ Added a good faith carve-out — cases commenced in good faith don't count against you
Every single expansion the Legislature made in 2025 confirms what the 2024 law did NOT cover. Family law cases didn't count. Out-of-state cases didn't count. Frivolous pleadings in a single case didn't count. The Legislature had to pass a bill to make them count — because they weren't covered before.
And every single filing this mother made was in good faith — backed by physical evidence no judge wanted to examine.
NOW — WHAT CHIEF JUDGE LEAH R. CASE ACTUALLY ORDERED
Case No. 2024-11429-CIDL, July 1, 2024 — entered on her own motion. No party requested it.
The 2024 statute required five finally determined civil actions before any of this could happen. Chief Judge Case used family law cases — a category the statute expressly excluded. Her own case list, her own attached exhibit, shows six cases listed as simply "Pending" — not finally determined, not qualifying under any reading of the law. The statute required an evidentiary hearing before a fundamental right could be stripped. What she gave instead was a 16-day window to respond in writing only. No hearing was ever held. The statute provided a leave-of-court pathway back in through the administrative judge, available regardless of financial means. The Case Order provides no such pathway — only an attorney signature requirement that only money can satisfy. That is not a stricter application of the statute. That is a wealth-based bar the statute does not authorize. The statute mandated that the clerk certify any prefiling order to the Florida Supreme Court registry. The Case Order was never certified. As of June 2, 2026 — confirmed on the Florida Supreme Court's own registry — her name does not appear. The statute authorized contempt narrowly — for disobeying a prefiling order by commencing a new action without leave, enforced by the administrative judge. The Case Order's Paragraph 7 — bolded in the original — threatens contempt, fines, costs, attorney's fees, and incarceration for any violation of a sweeping ban covering all communication and all existing filings. Incarceration for sending an email to a clerk appears nowhere in §68.093. The statute contains no communication restrictions of any kind. The total ban on all contact with every judge, judicial assistant, IT staff member, court administration official, bailiff, and clerk employee across four counties was invented entirely by Chief Judge Case — no statutory basis, no rule basis, no due process hearing, and no precedent in over two decades of Circuit Seven filing restriction history. And through all four pages of that order, §68.093 — the only statute governing any of this — is never cited once.
Not once.
The predicate arithmetic comes from her own exhibit. Looking at every case on her own attached list under the 2024 law:
🔴 Six cases — "Pending" — cannot qualify
🔴 Six cases — FMCI/FMDL family law designations — expressly excluded by statute
🔴 Four cases — dismissed sua sponte before she could litigate them
🔴 One case — 2022-32326 FMCI — "Denied with hearing" — also a family law matter, also excluded
One case. The statute required five. That one doesn't even count.
WHAT SHE INVENTED THAT EXISTS IN NO FLORIDA LAW — ANYWHERE:
🚫 A total communication ban — no emails, no phone calls, no faxes to any judge, judicial assistant, IT staff, bailiff, or clerk employee across four counties. Not in the 2024 statute. Not in the 2025 statute. Not in any Florida Rule of Civil Procedure. Not in any prior Circuit Seven order in over two decades of history. No due process hearing was held before this injunctive relief was extended to every named individual.
🚫 Incarceration as a specific enumerated threat for filing civil court documents or sending an email. The 2024 statute authorized contempt narrowly — for commencing a new action without leave, enforced by the administrative judge. The Case Order bolded incarceration as an explicit remedy for violating a sweeping order that goes far beyond anything §68.093 addresses. That expansion appears in no cited case and no Florida rule.
🚫 A circuit-wide ban reaching existing cases — including active family court proceedings where she had a right and a legal obligation to file. The statute addresses new actions only. Chief Judge Case applied the order to everything.
🚫 No leave pathway. The 2024 statute expressly required one — leave of the administrative judge, available regardless of financial means. The Case Order omitted it entirely, replacing it with an attorney signature requirement that only money can satisfy. Every properly entered Circuit Seven order on the Florida Supreme Court registry includes the leave pathway. This one does not. The Legislature's 2025 amendment had to address the structural impossibility this created — because Chief Judge Case was simultaneously the person who entered the restriction and the administrative judge who would have granted leave, meaning the pathway led directly back to her.
AND WHY DID ALL OF THIS HAPPEN?
Court Administrator Mark A. Weinberg put it in writing on May 29, 2024 — on official Seventh Judicial Circuit letterhead. He directed the court's own IT team to search circuit email systems and reported that her communications were "rants" expressing "displeasure with various judges' rulings."
Not threats. Not harassment. Criticism of judicial rulings — protected speech under the First Amendment and Article I, Section 5 of the Florida Constitution.
The show cause order was then served through the Volusia County Sheriff's Office — the same agency whose bailiffs received the benefit of her communication ban without a single due process hearing. Think about what that means in plain terms: the Volusia County Sheriff's Office became the enforcement arm of an order that made it a jailable offense for her to contact any court employee and BAILIFFS. Speak to the wrong person in that courthouse and the same agency serving that order could arrest her for probable cause on the spot.
That is not a coincidence. That is a conflict.
No due process hearing was held before that enforcement power was extended to them. No finding was made that any individual deputy, bailiff, or court employee had been threatened or harmed. The ban was blanket, it was immediate, and it handed arrest authority to the exact agency with the most to gain from silencing her. And then the head of that very agency — Michael Chitwood, Volusia County's sitting Sheriff — took to his own social media to blast that mother by name. Applauding the order. Making false statements. Defaming a citizen who had no ability to respond, no ability to file, and no ability to defend herself in any court without first paying for an attorney she could not afford.
That is not a Sheriff doing his job. That is not public safety. That is an elected official using his platform and his office to pile on a silenced mother — one whose cases named his agency — while she sat legally gagged by an order his deputies helped deliver.
Doxing. Defamation. Abuse of office.
And not one person in a position of authority said a word about it.
If you talk to us, we get to arrest you.
Make that make sense.
THE RESULT:
For two full years, a mother has been unable to:
❌ File a contempt motion after her children were removed out of state during her incarceration in violation of the existing family court order
❌ Collect child support and unpaid medical reimbursement arrears going back to 2019 — because she cannot file without an attorney she cannot afford
❌ Address unauthorized health insurance enrollment of her minor children without attorney signature
❌ Correct an incomplete criminal appeal record — the Case Order makes contacting the clerk's office a potential act of contempt backed by the threat of incarceration
❌ Submit a public records request under Chapter 119 — a statutory right every Florida citizen exercises for free, with no attorney required — without risking jail
She was never on the registry. She never qualified under the 2024 law. She still would not qualify under the stricter 2025 law. The designation was never completed. The process was never followed. The statute was never cited.
Chief Judge Leah R. Case wrote her own rules, signed her own name to them, and called it judicial authority.
The Legislature disagreed — unanimously — and tightened the law a year later. It does not take a Florida Bar license to read an unambiguous statute.
A mother has been silenced for two years under an order that cites no statute, follows no process, completes no designation, and invents remedies that exist in no Florida law. Her children were removed out of state in violation of a court order she cannot enforce. Child support and unpaid medical go uncollected because she cannot file without counsel she cannot afford. Her parental rights sit in limbo while the order blocking her from defending them was never legally completed.
A Chief Judge entered this order, signed her name to it, and has faced no consequence. The Florida Supreme Court has received this record. A complaint has been filed with the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission. The petition is before the court. The registry has been checked. The statute has been read.
Now we wait.
But we will not wait quietly.
We cover what the courts don't want you to see.
